With an upcoming Season 11, The Walking Dead fans have watched the group of protagonists navigate their fair share of wars, heartbreak and walkers among the apocalypse. However, along with these external threats, there is a common theme repeated throughout the franchise — mommy issues. While tumultuous maternal relationships are certainly seen in the AMC series, they also extend into the greater Walking Dead Universe, including Fear the Walking Dead. Although they aren’t healthy, these strained relationships often become the character’s driving force or a catalyst for change.

The Walking Dead’s Alpha and Lydia

The majority of Season 10 pitted mother against mother. After, Alpha murdered Carol’s adoptive son Henry. Carol became obsessed with justice. But Carol wasn’t the only mother to lose her child. Although she didn’t die, Alpha’s daughter Lydia joined up with TWD‘s protagonists and left her mother and the Whisperers behind.

Much like Carol, Alpha wanted Lydia back. Despite Alpha’s horrifically sadistic ways, she cared for her daughter. However, there was too much bad blood for them to get over. Meanwhile, Carol and Lydia struggled with their own relationship. While Carol didn’t entirely embrace the girl as a daughter figure, it seemed to be going in that direction by Season 10’s conclusion.

Fear the Walking Dead’s Virginia and Dakota

Virginia and Dakota’s relationship was beyond complicated. In Season 6, Dakota confessed to Morgan that Dakota — her younger sister — was actually her daughter. She had the girl young, and her parents stepped up to claim Dakota as their own out of shame. The news came as a shock to Dakota, who had long despised her “sister’s” controlling nature and villainous plots. However, Dakota stepped up as one of Fear the Walking Dead‘s main antagonists after Virginia’s death and later joined up with Teddy and following the old adage: like mother, like daughter.

The Walking Dead’s Carol and Lizzie

After losing her biological daughter in Season 2 of The Walking Dead, Carol became the stand-in mother figure for a few orphaned children. While her bond with Henry was healthy and strong, her former relationship with Lizzie continued to haunt her well into the series. Upon Ryan Samuels’ death, his two daughters — Mika and Lizzie — looked to Carol as their paternal guardian. While hesitant, Carol ultimately accepted the responsibility, but it wasn’t long before she realized something wasn’t right with Lizzie. Lizzie believed she had a special relationship with walkers. She said she could hear them talking to her and got upset when survivors killed them. Following horror’s creepy kid trope, she seemed fascinated with blood and even thought about killing baby Judith when she cried.

Although Carol tried to steer the girl toward the right path, it backfired. In Season 4’s “The Grove,” things were brought to a head when Lizzie stabbed her sister to death to make her a walker. Realizing Lizzie was “disturbed” and dangerous to others, Carol made a heartwrenching decision. She took Lizzie out to a grove where she shot her in the head after uttering the now-infamous line, “look at the flowers.”

Fear the Walking Dead’s Teddy and Mother

Teddy and his mother arguably had the most twisted relationship in Fear the Walking Dead and maybe the entirety of The Walking Dead Universe. Much like Psycho‘s Norman Bates, he referred to her only as Mother. When Season 6 introduced Teddy, Mother was already long dead. However, it didn’t stop him from conversing with her in his prison cell.

Later, he recruited Alicia and Dakota to help him exhume his mother’s body from her grave. After, he proceeded to touch and kiss her on the mouth. The creepy scene became ever worse in retrospect when Teddy later revealed the woman they dug up wasn’t his mother. In fact, he had murdered his mother and buried her in the backyard of his childhood home after she threatened to commit him to a psychiatric facility. Although Mother never made a physical appearance, her strained relationship with Teddy became the main driving force of his character.